April 26th - 29th, 2004 - ICTP, Trieste, Italy (Enrico Fermi Building - Room 101)

- Short description
- Preliminary programme
- Background material
- Workshop director
- List of participants
- Logistic information
- Workshop secretariat

Short description
The EEE Programme includes an important component on research on and dissemination of the appropriate ways of designing national accounts in such a way that the sustainability of development can be ascertained. As a result of this, quite many of the lectures at the opening conference in February 2003 dealt with different aspects of a "sustainability index". Traditional approaches to construct such an index have focused on the production account in SNA. Recent research within the EEE Programme and elsewhere has, however, indicated that it is within the capital account, an indicator may be constructed. The idea is roughly that development within a period is sustainable if the value of the change in a per capita asset summed over all assets is positive. Loosely speaking, development is sustainable if wealth per capita is non-decreasing. Three things should be noted: 1) All assets of importance for human well-being must be included in the wealth concept - inclusive wealth, 2) The assets must be valued with the correct accounting prices reflecting the asset's contribution to future well-being, 3) When well-being is partially determined by external factors, a drift term must be included. For proofs of these propositions, see Arrow, Dasgupta, and Mäler (2003).
Partly because of the activities following the ICTP conference in February last year, empirical applications of the propositions noted above have commenced in many research centres. In the fall of 2003, a project was started in Australia, trying to estimate changes in the inclusive wealth in a particular region. Similarly, in January 1 this year, a similar project was started in Sweden. RANESA (Resource Accounting Network for Eastern and Southern Africa) will in March start projects in which changes in inclusive wealth per capita will be estimated in Ethiopia and in Tanzania.
In southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia and Botswana) such studies have been going on for some time. It therefore seems to be a good time for researchers from these different teams to meet and share with each other experiences and expectations. This is the background for the IWAP (Inclusive Wealth and Accounting Prices) conference in late April 2004. Possibly, a follow up should be organized in 2005.

Top

Preliminary programme - .pdf file

Top

Background material
Arrow, K., P. Dasgutpa, and K.-G. Mäler (2003), Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies, Environmental and Resource Economics, 26:647 - 685

Arrow, K., P. Dasgupta, and K.-G. Mäler (2003), The Genuine Saving Criterion and the Value of Population, Economic Theory, 21:217-225

Mäler, K.-G. (2004) Wealth and Well-being in a Model with Discrete Time, Beijer Institute

Project descriptions from Australia, Sweden, Ethiopia and Tanzania

Top

Workshop director
Karl-Göran Mäler, The Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Sweden


Top

List of participants
Sara ANIYAR, The Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Sweden
Michael HARRIS, University of Sydney, Australia
Glenn-Marie LANGE, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, USA
Chuan-Zhong LI, University of Dalarna, Sweden
Karl-Goran Maler, The Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Sweden
Adelaide MATLANYANE, CEEPA, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Eric Dada MUNGATANA, CEEPA, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Clive MUTUNGA, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Natu MWAMBA, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Zeinab NGAZY, Institute of Marine Sciences, Tanzania
Leonie PEARSON, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia
P.D.N. Srinivasu, Andhra University, India

Top

Logistic information

The meeting will be held in the ICTP headquarters, Enrico Fermi Building, Room 101.

How to reach ICTP. Click here.

Top

Workshop secretariat
Ms. M. Rosa del Rio, ICTP, Italy

Top